Fall Into Me (20 page)

“Yeah. Calvert was reworking the schedule earlier, making sure Cookie had a few days if he needed them.”

“I can’t tell him right now, not if he’s dealing with this.” Dismayed, she met Troy Lee’s solemn gaze. “I don’t have any control here, do I?”

“It’s life, baby. How much control do we have over anything?”

“You’re not helping.”

“Come here.” He jerked his chin in a come-hither motion. She went to him and he pulled her onto his lap, arms around her in a loose embrace. “It’ll be all right. Give it a few days, let things settle down with Jim and Cookie. Okay?”

“Okay.” Warmed by his nearness and reassurances, she turned her head to bring their lips together. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and opened his mouth beneath hers. The kiss whispered between them, soft and shimmering with promise.

After a moment, he tipped her gently from his lap. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Later, they lay together, naked in her bed, and talked in drowsy voices. Replete after a lovemaking as slow and easy as his song had been earlier, Angel wrapped an arm around his waist and rested her cheek on his chest. She rubbed her fingers along the indentations of his ribs and abdominals.

“Stop.” He caught her hand on an exhausted laugh. “I’m ticklish.”

Her own giggle was devilish. “I know.”

“Tease.” Arms folded about her, he flipped her to her back in a careful, controlled movement. He reared up on his elbows, then shifted to trail a gentle touch down the center line of her belly. “Did you know she’s only the size of a large butterbean right now?”

“No, I didn’t. How did you know that?”

“Read it in a book today. Her heartbeat should be audible too.”

“It was.” She stroked a fingertip over his wrist. The awe on his features echoed her own, winding strong threads of intimacy around them. “Her, huh?”

“Yeah.” He bracketed her abdomen with his palms, rubbing his thumbs over her skin. His grin contained more than a hint of sheepishness. “When I think about it, I just kind of assume it’s a girl, but a boy would be great too.”

Her breath caught, almost as much from his reverent touch as his words. She swallowed, moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You sound like you plan to be involved with this baby.”

He looked up with a small frown. “I thought we’d already established that.”

“I knew you wanted us to be together, at least for now, but—”

“Angel. Baby.” His lashes dipped and he shook his head, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. “There’s no ‘at least’ here. I want…” He sucked in a deep breath, his hands tightening a little. “I want it all with you.”

“Define ‘all’.”

“I want what my dad and Christine had.” Resting on one elbow, he slipped a hand up to cradle her jaw. “I can see that with you, and this baby.”

“I do not understand you.” Suppressing the trembling happiness his words evoked, she waved a hand between them. “Most guys would be all bent out of shape because I—”

“I’m not most guys.”

“—am having another man’s baby.”

“DNA doesn’t make a parent, Angel. Christine didn’t give birth to me and she was more of a parent to me than my biological mom ever was.”

She levered up on her elbow to face him and trace the lines of his features with one fingertip. “She’s really special to you, isn’t she?”

“Christine? Yeah.” He kissed her finger when it came into contact with his mouth. “She’s great. My mother, my natural mother, probably shouldn’t have had a kid to begin with. She wasn’t a bad person or anything; she just wasn’t interested in motherhood in general and me in particular.”

“I’m sorry.” It hurt her heart, the picture of him as a little boy whose mama didn’t have time for him.

“Don’t be. I was only two when she and Dad divorced, and I lived with him. He met Christine when I was four, married her a year later. She…” He laughed softly, affection softening his eyes. “She started from the beginning treating me like I was hers, but she was so insistent about not infringing on my other mom’s place. I remember, how careful she was about that.”

“So what about your ‘other’ mom?” She feathered a caress over his cheekbone. “Do you have a relationship with her?”

“She died when I was seven.”

“I’m—”

He stopped her words with a swift kiss. “Don’t be sorry. The point is, I don’t have to be this baby’s biological father to love it or be the kind of dad it needs, the kind of man you need.”

“This whole conversation scares me.”

“I know. One second at—”

“We can’t one second our way through this baby’s life, Troy Lee.”

“We won’t. It’s just a place to start, Angel, until you’re ready to let go and risk, let go and believe.”

A boldfaced hypocrite. That’s what he was. Troy Lee refused to grip the steering wheel in a stranglehold. All his talk with Angel about letting go, taking risks, and what was he doing today? Hiding behind silence, like a kid pouting because he hadn’t gotten his way.

You have to give him a chance.

Damn it. As bad as he hated to admit it, maybe part of the issue with him and Calvert, who sat just as silently in the passenger seat, was him. Maybe he’d made it all worse by not confronting the situation head on. So how the hell could he expect Angel to take a risk, when he was hiding behind his own fear?

He hated when his mind worked like his father’s. F-uck. Now he was going to have to do something about it. He flexed his fingers, knuckles aching, around the wheel. He pulled in a deep breath, centering himself as if he waited for the starting pistol. “You make me nervous as hell.”

Calvert turned his head quickly. “What?”

“You make me nervous.” The words came out even and matter of fact, thank God. He swallowed, keeping his gaze on the road. “So I start overthinking everything and then I screw up.”

“Why do I make you nervous?” A sideways glance revealed Calvert facing forward as well, bouncing his thumb off his knee.

Troy Lee’s chest seized up. This was different from opening up with Angel. Is this how she felt, poised on the precipice of belief and afraid to look over? He drew in another centering inhale. “Probably because I admire you professionally. You and Sheriff Reed, you’re the reasons I came down here.”

Calvert made an uncomfortable sound in his throat. “Are there less screwups when I’m not around?”

“Kinda.” Troy Lee shrugged, slowing to make the right onto Ferry Road. “I’m not perfect. I’m still learning.”

Amusement colored Calvert’s grunt. “We’re all still learning. It’s not like you master everything in a year or two. It’s new every single day.”

Silence fell between them, broken only by the crackle of radio transmissions. After a couple of minutes, Calvert cleared his throat. “I haven’t made it easy on you. Cookie thinks we’re too much alike.”

Troy Lee shot him a look. “Uh, no. We are
not
alike.”

What appeared to be a genuine grin quirked at Calvert’s mouth. “That’s what I said.”

“Damn straight.”

Another silent moment passed. Calvert resumed thumping his knee. “So why did you hang in?”

“You want me to go?”

“No. I’m just asking. A lot of guys would have tossed it in after the Schaefer deal.”

“My dad didn’t raise a quitter.”

“I can understand that. Mine didn’t either.” After a pause, Calvert stretched out his legs. “My nephew’s taking a math class with your sister.”

“Yeah, Ellis.” He shrugged. “What of it?”

“Nothing. I mean, they’re friends, I guess, and his impression from her was that you’d gone into law enforcement because of your dad’s death.”

The familiar grief gutted him, followed by the wave of mind-numbing anger. Yeah, he was supposed to get beyond that, but the whole damn thing was so senseless, such a damn waste of his father’s warmth and intelligence, his fucking
life
. Simply thinking about it pissed him off all over again. He wrestled the anger down and locked it away, keeping his voice even when he spoke again.

“His impression would be the correct one.”

“It’s hard, losing a parent like that.” Old sorrow lurked in Calvert’s quiet voice.

“Yeah.” Troy Lee swallowed, more against the tightness in his throat than the slight burn in his chest. He forced a laugh, trying to clear his throat. “Maybe we do have some stuff in common.”

“Maybe.” Calvert’s deep chuckle held real humor, a hint of male ribbing. “But don’t push your luck, kid.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Because I have to go.” Visible in the mirror, Troy Lee lounged, shoulders propped against the wall.

“It’s your job. Not mine.” She cast a critical look at her reflection. The black silk made the silvery highlights in her hair shine, and the velvet rose design along the waist hid the tiny little pooch she had there now. With one hand, she adjusted her neckline. Thanks to her pregnancy, she had awesome cleavage.

“No, but I’m yours.” He moved to stand behind her, palms warm on her bare shoulders. “Tell me why you don’t want to go.”

She glared at him in the mirror and lifted her diamond studs, the real ones she’d bought as a celebration when the Cue Club had first started turning a profit under her ownership. “You have to ask?”

“No. Not really.” He lifted one hand to jerk his thumb toward her closet. “Which shoes do you want out of there?”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“Stop trying to pick a fight with me so you’ll have an excuse not to come with me.”

She narrowed her eyes further, bad temper spiking all under her skin. “I don’t need an excuse.”

“Right.” His snort bordered on rude. He crossed to survey her shoe collection. “If you could find one that would hold water, you’d be laying it out and I’d be going alone.”

Lord, she hated when he was right. Maybe seduction would work, since feminine pique hadn’t. Coming up behind him, she trailed her fingernails through the short hair at his nape. “Troy Lee…”

“It’s not working, Angel baby. Office politics. I have to put in an appearance.” He held aloft a pair of open-toed heels, more rhinestone straps than anything else. “Hey, I like these. Very sexy.”

“I’m not wearing those.” She snagged them from his easy hold and tossed them toward the bed. One thumped on the floor. Aggravated, she scanned the closet until she found what she was looking for and reached up to pull down the sedate pointed-toe pumps.

“Those?” Askance, Troy Lee glanced from the shoes in her hand to the eff-me pair she’d discarded.

“Yes. These.” She slipped into one, then the other. “I’m not wearing hooker shoes to your work’s holiday party.”

“Hooker shoes? Hardly. Call-girl shoes, maybe. You know, classy and sexy. It’s not like anyone’s going to look at your shoes—”

“Will there be wives and girlfriends there?”

“Yeah.”

“Trust me, they’ll notice.” Her stomach lifted and turned over, and she fought against a wave of nausea definitely caused by something other than early pregnancy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this sickly nervous about going anywhere.

“Babe, you have nothing to worry about. You should have seen the dress Calvert’s wife wore last year. Your shoes are tame compared to that thing. It was like this really short black slip and there were these beads…” He gestured from torso to thigh and she rolled her eyes.

“That’s different, Troy Lee.” She shook her suddenly sweaty hands. Sweet Jesus, she was going to die before this was all over.

“Why is it different?” A tight note invaded his voice and she looked up into his too-alert gaze.

“It just is.”

“Shit.” He looked away, his rough exhale reeking of irritation and disgust. “We’re back to that not-as-good-as-everyone-else thing again, aren’t we?”

“Well, on some levels it’s true.” To her absolute horror, the words wobbled. She resisted an overwhelming desire to hunch into herself the way she had in middle school.

“The hell it is.” His irritation flared into anger. “Damn it, Angel, I don’t understand you. Give me one example of someone we’ll see tonight who’s above you?”

Uh, maybe everyone? Glimpsing the very real ire in his blue gaze, she kept that smart little retort to herself. Instead, she smiled and shook back her hair. “I thought you didn’t want to fight tonight.”

“I changed my mind. Some things are worth fighting about. Answer the question.”

He wasn’t going to let this go. With an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she lifted her hands. “Oh, I don’t know… Autry Reed. She’s a lawyer.”

“Okay. She’s a lawyer. Big deal.”

“Well, yeah, it is. She went to
Mercer
.”

“I’m not getting this, Angel.”

“It’s not rocket science, Troy Lee.”

“Obviously not. If it was, I’d understand.” He splayed his hand against the wall and leaned his weight on it. “Honestly, I don’t understand anyone being intimidated by Autry Reed.”

“It’s not just her.” A fiery blend of anger and dread swirled over her nerves. “It’s…come on, Troy Lee. Countywide emergency personnel and their significant others?”

“Yeah?”

She almost growled at him in frustration. God, he was so
dense
to be so smart. She sank onto the end of the bed, using her fingers to mark off names and facts as a visual aid for him. “Is Tick going to be there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. His baby just came home right before Christmas.” Confusion twisted his brows together into a snarl.

“He graduated in the top of his class at UGA—”

“So did I.”

“And his wife, who works for the FBI, has a doctoral degree.”

“I think so.”

“Okay. Cookie’s going to be there.”

“Um, yeah. Probably.” His perplexity didn’t clear.

“Tori Calvert is working on her doctorate. What about Steve Monroe? Will he be around?”

“He said he was. What—”

“His wife Dahlia? She teaches out at the high school and wrapped up her master’s degree at Valdosta this last semester.”

His lips parted for a second in slack surprise and he shook his head. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“My mama does hair for half the county. She knows everything about everybody.”

“Sweetheart, is this about education? I don’t get how—”

“It’s about education and respectability.”

“Baby, you went to college.”

“Two years at the community college, Troy Lee.” She dragged a hand through her hair, mussing the layers she’d spent thirty painstaking minutes drying and smoothing and setting. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Angel, I swear to God, I’m about to get seriously pissed off.”

“Don’t swear. It’s a sin.”

“So is extramarital sex and you don’t seem to have a problem sleeping with me. We’re not changing the subject.”

She twined her hands together in her lap. “Why are you angry?”

The swiftness of his moving stole her breath. He knelt before her, both of his long hands covering hers. “Because you don’t see what I do.”

“You see what you want to see.”

He ignored her. “Talk to me about respectability.”

Her shoulders slumped on a weary exhale. “Oh, come on, Troy Lee, surely you get this part. Do you know what I did after community college?”

“You worked days at McGee’s and waited tables at the diner at night.”

It was her turn to stare at him in shock. “How do you know that?”

“Mr. Hubert at the diner.” He named one of the town’s elderly residents, a World War II veteran who spent his days sipping tea and talking to anyone who’d pass the time with him. “He adores you. And you saved your money and when the Cue Club went up for sale, you wrote a business plan, secured a loan, turned it into a profitable venture when no one thought it was possible. So no, I don’t see how the hell you can be intimidated by anyone or anything, Angel Henderson.”

“But I am,” she whispered, tears stinging her perfectly shaded and mascaraed eyes. “I don’t want to be, but I hold up the bar against who they are, what they do and there’s no comparison.”

“You’re right, there’s not.” He seemed to breathe the words, a pure emotion glinting in his gaze as he looked up at her. “You took nothing and you made something out of it, just like Christine and those balls of clay she starts with when she’s sculpting. It takes a rare and unique talent, you know, to make something great out of nothing, and you have it.”

She closed her eyes, trying to pull her wild feelings together. He moved, the fine cotton of his shirt rustling, and pressed his cheek to hers. “Don’t discount it, baby. Be proud of it.”

On a trembling sigh, she lifted her lashes, finding his gorgeous blues close to hers. A shift of her head and their lips met in the mingling she cherished. He pulled back, rubbing warm hands over her bare knees. He stared at her, his eyes alight with a fierce passion, his expression serious. “I’m not going to ask you to do something that makes you sincerely uncomfortable, but I would like to have you with me tonight and I’d damn sure be proud to have you with me.”

He rose and extended his hand, palm up. Holding his gaze, Angel sucked in a deep breath and wrestled the fear down.

She laid her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. His fingers tightened around hers and she moistened her lips, probably messing up the lipstick she’d painted on with painstaking care. Damn it all, if she was going to do this, she’d do it on her own terms. She kicked out of the pumps she’d never worn because they really weren’t her.

“Get me the darn hooker shoes then.”

His pleased laugh rumbled over her and she caught a glimpse of pride shining in his eyes as he leaned in to kiss her. “You got it, babe.”

“They are too cute for words.” Leaning as far forward as her pregnancy would allow, Autry Reed rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, a wistfully romantic expression on her face.

“Who?” With a grateful breath, Tori slipped her shoes off, hidden by the tablecloth, and peered around, following the direction of Autry’s gaze. As crowded as the Radium Spring’s ballroom was, though, it was hard to pinpoint who Autry referred to.

“Angel and Troy Lee.”

Tori finally located the pair, alone at a table across the packed room. A pair of strappy sandals lay discarded next to Angel’s chair, and Troy Lee cradled one bare, slender foot against his thigh, rubbing his thumbs across her arch as they talked. His grin flashed at something Angel said, and even from a distance, the adoration on his face was apparent. A little more of Tori’s insecurity where Angel was concerned drained away.

“They are sweet,” she concurred.

“I’m glad too.” Autry smiled. “She deserves to have someone look at her like that, especially after what Jim did.”

A tiny frown pulled at Tori’s brows. “Do you know her well?”

“I know her to speak to.” Autry relaxed into her chair, rubbing a palm over the growing bulge of her second child. “Her sister Hope cuts my hair and her mother has been doing Mama’s hair for years. Your mama’s too, for that matter.”

“She’s Miss Marie’s daughter? I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, she’s Miss Marie’s daughter. Her oldest. I would’ve thought you’d know her. She graduated with Tick.” Autry’s soft laugh was indulgent. “I forget that you lead an isolated life, Victoria.”

“I do not. I was like eight when Tick graduated from high school. All I remember about that is having to sit through a bunch of boring speeches and all those people being called to get their diplomas.” Her gaze tracked back to the couple across the room. “She does look happy with him.”

“Very much so.”

Fiddling with her engagement ring, Tori scanned the room for Mark, finally finding him near the bank of French doors that opened onto the balcony. He stood with Stanton Reed and a couple of men from the city police department, all of them deep in conversation. He still looked tired and drawn, and worry rippled through her.

“How is he?” Matching concern laced Autry’s quiet question.

“Better, I think. He’s not sleeping well, but that can be normal.” Thinking about Mark’s quiet wrestle with his grief for his wife and unborn child made her own heart ache. He’d mourned them for years after Jenny had vanished, but even so, facing the reality of their deaths had hit him hard. “I think for him believing something is true and knowing it’s true are two very different things. He’s hurting, but there’s a finality he didn’t have before.”

“Sounds like a double-edged sword.”

“Exactly. A very sharp one.”

Across the room, Clark Dempsey stopped at Troy Lee and Angel’s table, smiling at her, slapping Troy Lee on the shoulder with a persuasive expression. Troy Lee shook his head, then grimaced and rose. He leaned down to kiss Angel quickly before following Clark to the stairs. Angel followed his progress, then reached for her drink. A disconcerted look flitted across her face as she glanced around the room before hiding behind taking a sip of what looked like sparkling water.

Empathy flashed through Tori. Lord, she knew that feeling well enough—being nervously alone, out of place and step with life going on around her. Funny she’d find that little glimpse of sisterhood with Angel Henderson of all people.

Angel reached down to slide on the sparkly high heels. She rose, smoothing her skirt, and slipped into the alcove where the restroom entrances were. Tori lifted her own sparkling water and looked around to check on Mark. He leaned against the wall, seemingly concentrating on something Coney’s police chief was saying.

A familiar, willowy blonde detached herself from another group and headed for the restrooms with a purposeful stride. Tori frowned.